We debuted the Eden platform about a year ago at the Flash Gaming Summit. Over the past year we learned a lot regarding the right and wrong way to build tooling, not just game tooling, but tooling in general.

Here at ZaaLabs we consider ourselves to be workflow zealots. We’ve recently expanded our team to include a few exceptionally talented artists. As Flash Game development moves into the Stage3D realm (not just 3D games, but 2D as well), tooling becomes incredibly important. Most studios with a decent budget actually build custom tooling, tailored for the game.

The original goal for the Eden Platform was to make creating these custom tools for your game easier. We had grand ideas of having a vast library of plugins where developers could pull pieces of functionality together so that you didn’t have to write tools from scratch. We’re still fond of this idea, and believe it can work (but perhaps not a plugin based system).

However, when it came to starting a new project that required tooling, we found ourselves reusing pieces of code from Eden to retrofit into our new tooling. The reason for this was because the plugin system we had built was overly complex to get working quickly and easily. If we couldn’t get the plugin system working for our use case (the team who developed Eden in the first place)… how on earth is it be viable for other developers to use?

Other problems became apparent while developing Eden. We chose to use Adobe Flex as the framework for our tooling system. This caused MANY development issues while attempting to bend Flex (and the Flash Platform) in ways that were never envisioned: runtime shared libraries, SDK compliance, the marshall plan, halo vs spark – this list goes on. While Flex is a great framework for form-based, enterprise-level applications, getting it to play nicely with the Eden Platform was an insurmountable task for us. (We are excited for what changes Apache Flex will bring).

So now, one year later, we find ourselves at a fork in the road. We can either rebuild Eden from scratch or send it to greener pastures. The Eden Platform development team has enjoyed the ride, but some of the team has decided that this is their stop.

So at this time, we are announcing the discontinuation of the Eden Platform.

This doesn’t mean that ZaaLabs has given up on the dream of building some of the industry’s best tools – far from it. But it does mean that the Eden Platform will no longer be sold or supported.

If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact us.